Incandescent mantle.



NITED TATES PATENT OFFICE.

ORLANDO M. THOWLESS, OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY.

INCANDESCENT MANTLE.

SFECIEICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 657,141, dated September 4, 1900. Application filed June 24,1899. Serial No. 721,792. (No model.)

T0 at whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, ORLANDO M. THowLnss, a subject of the Queen of Great Britain, and a resident of Newark, in the county of Essex and State of New Jersey, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Incandescent Mantles, of which the following is a specification.

My invention relates to incandescent mantles and to methods of improving the same.

The object of my invention is to produce a mantle giving more efficiency than those at present in use, which is stronger, and which can be transported without liability of breakage before use.

To carry out myinvention, I take the ordinary mantle, of which the Welsbach may serve as a type, directly it is shaped and immerse it in a solution of collodion or melted paraffin or light-bodied lacquer or similar substances which have mixed with and suspended in them particles of the material of which the light-giving surface of the mantles is composed. The mantle is then removed from the oXid-carrying substance and dried while suspended with the broad portion downward. The carrying substance is best made of a good siccative material. The immersion of the mantle in the carrying substance leaves it impregnated with the collodion, paraffin, the, containing the light producing oxid which reinforces the mantle. A reinforcement might be also deposited from a watery solution-such as nitrate ofthorium, for example; but such watery solutions are not adapted to the purpose I have in view and have not proved successful, and the advantage of using such substances as I have mentioned above is that there is a tendency for the particles to deposit on the high points of the mesh, as well as in the interstices, the particles thus deposited catching the heat, and consequently giving more light. This reinforcement also renders the mantle yielding and pliable, and consequently suitable for transportation without breakage. WVhen the mantle is placed on the burner and lighted, the collodion or other carrying substance will burn away, leaving behind the reinforcing lighting material and becoming closely associated therewith. This will make a more stable and better illuminating-mantle. Clippings from mantles, imperfect mantles, and old broken mantles may be used as a source of the reinforcing oxid material. Another advantage of my mechanically suspended mixture of the combustible liquid and the oXids in the forming of a' reinforced mantle consists in the fact that in drying the suspended mantle the combined material has a tendency to thicken somewhat at the lower portion of the mantle. The mantle receives the greatest heat near its lower extremity up to the point of the apex of the flame, owing to the fact that it is only between these points that the flame comes in actual contact with the mantle. From the apex of the flame to the top of the mantle there is no contact with the flame, and the upper part of the mantle is heated only by radiation. Therefore the flame only being in direct contact with the lower part of the mantle a larger quantity of the light-giving material is most desirable in that portion of the mantle, and as the heat radiation is greater near the apex of the flame and gradually decreases therefrom toward the upper part of the mantle it is of great value to have a gradually-decreasing amount of the light-giving reinforcing material the farther it is removed from the apex of the flame, which is brought about in my reinforced mantle. The resulting mantle will have a light-giving portion gradually increasing in amount from the top downward and being greatest at the bottom.

I do not in this application claim the method of making my improved mantle, this forming the subject-matter of a separate application and is a division of this application.

Having thus described my invention, what I claim is--- 1. A reinforced incandescent mantle hav-- ing for its basic structure an ordinarily formed mantle, and covered with a coating of collodion or similar substance holding in mechanical combination therewith particles of material similar in composition to those forming the light-giving portion of the mantle.

2. A reinforced mantle for incandescent burners, having besides its regular oxid or similar structure, an additional layer of oxid deposited thereon from a mechanical combination of a combustible solid and of oxids ing refractory substances, substantially as IO adapted to form the light-giving portion of set forth. said mantle. Signed at New York, in the county of New 3. 'A reinforced mantle for incandescing York and State of New York, this 22d day of burners, having for its light-giving portion a June, A. D. 1899.

layer of refractory oxids increasing in den-' ORLANDO M. THOVLESS. sity from the top downward, and adapted to \Vitnesses:

present to the flame at its hottest portion a VINCENT VICTORY, suitably-reinforced thickness of thelight-giv- A. L. BECKER. 

